Time to reform draconian abortion laws

This week, the US Supreme Court delivered a devastating reversal to a near 50-year precedent set in the landmark case Roe Vs. Wade in 1973 that federally mandated the right of women to choose an abortion. After the Court’s decision, each State now has the right to legislate on the matter and already at least 28 States have legislation that kicked in immediately restricting abortions. 

As worldwide outcry against the US Court’s move intensifies, it is appropriate to reflect on our own laws that have for decades restricted a woman’s right to choose on decisions concerning her own body. Sri Lanka has among the most restrictive abortion laws in the world where it remains illegal unless the life of the mother is at risk. Under the Penal Code which dates from 1883, anyone deliberately causing a miscarriage, except for the purpose of saving a woman’s life, can be imprisoned for up to three years. The sentence can increase to seven years if the woman is “quick with child,” an archaic phrase meaning that the movement of the foetus can be felt. The same penalties apply to a person who performs an abortion and to a woman who causes herself to miscarry.

A research carried out a few years ago found that abortions are responsible for 10 to 13% of maternal deaths in Sri Lanka, making it the third most common cause of death during pregnancy. But because the procedure is illegal there is hardly any data. In 2016, the Health Ministry estimated that 658 abortions are carried out every day in Sri Lanka. A vast majority of these abortions are carried out illegally, meaning that they are done by untrained personnel, in dirty and dangerous conditions and in almost all these instances there is hardly any post-procedure care which endangers the woman’s life.

In 2015 however, the Sri Lanka Ministry of Health issued the National Guidelines on post-abortion care. The guidelines stipulate that any woman who undergoes an illegal abortion can seek medical care for complications, if needed, at any government facility without fearing prosecution. However, due to the criminalisation of the procedure and the supposed social stigma many women who undergo illegal abortions would not opt for obtaining post-abortion care.

During the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration even the nominal healthcare services that were provided for safe abortions through a few international non-governmental organisations were curtailed, reportedly on the behest of a member of the first family. Due to pressure from a religious group, these INGOs were forced out of the country, increasing illegal, unsafe abortions.  

Human rights advocates have argued that denying women and girls access to safe, legal abortions jeopardises numerous human rights, including the rights to life, health, freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, physical integrity, non-discrimination, privacy and equality, and the right to decide the number and spacing of children.

Unfortunately, rather than addressing the real dangers of unsafe abortions and the tremendous mental and emotional harm they cause to women, the laws guiding this matter in Sri Lanka have been for long years determined by politics and religion. Rather than adhering to years of medical and professional advice that draconian anti-abortion laws be eased, in the minimum in cases of rape, incest and pregnancies concerning children, there has hardly been any movement in this regard.

A right to an abortion is simply not a matter of access to a medical procedure which may or may not be required in a woman’s life. It has become a symbol of a woman’s right to have agency over her own body which should not be determined by governments. While the decision in the US Supreme Court has reversed 50 years of precedent in that country, it can be a moment to reflect on our own draconian laws which for over a hundred years have demeaned women as those who cannot make decisions regarding their own bodies. Time to start this conversation and affect meaningful change.